Alone and despondent after leaving Homecoming warm-ups at Avery, Scarlett hides in her room until Maryam announces a visitor. Lukas arrives, concerned that she disappeared mid-warm-up. Scarlett tries deflecting, even proposing sex as a distraction, but Lukas insists on talking and understanding what happened.

Under questioning, Scarlett admits mounting stressors: the unopened MCAT email, seeing her high school coach’s wife, and, most crucially, a persistent block on inward dives since her injury. When Lukas recognizes the pattern, he doesn’t offer fixes; he simply says, “I’m sorry, Scarlett.” The validation breaks her open, and she sobs in his arms while he holds her through repeated messages and time.

Scarlett then recounts the day her career splintered: on the eve of NCAA finals her abusive father contacted her against a court order; she couldn’t reach Barb; anxiety spiked; and hours before competition her long-term boyfriend Josh ended their relationship. She failed a dive for the first time, was injured, and Josh never visited afterward. Lukas’s anger centers on Josh and the father, and he reframes her “failure” as the result of compounded trauma.

To help her see a path forward, Lukas shares his own buried history: his mother died while he was at a meet, his guilt turned swimming into a necessity, performance cratered, and he missed Olympic trials. With family urging grit, Pen alone validated stepping back. He quit for a time, traveled, mourned, and returned when he wanted to, not because he had to. Lukas tells Scarlett to allow sadness rather than force solutions, reassures her worth beyond diving, and stays while she cries herself to sleep in his arms.